RACE  VALUES  AND 
RACE  DESTINIES 


VeA  * 


By 

Secretary  GEORGE  LUTHER  CADY 


THE  AMERICAN  MISSIONARY  ASSOCIATION 
287  Fourth  Avenue,  New  York  City 

Eastern  District  Pacific  District  Western  District 

606  Congregational  House  423  Phelan  Building  19  South  La  Salle  Street 

Boston,  Mass.  San  Francisco,  Cal.  Chicago,  111. 


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RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE 
DESTINIES 


Secretary  George  Luther  Cady 

Perhaps  there  are  few  who  have  entirely  escaped  the  sense  of 
disillusionment  as  they  have  come  down  from  the  stimulated  and 
stimulating  heights  of  the  war — for  horrible  as  it  was,  utterly 
blasphemous  as  it  hurled  itself  upon  us,  yet  there  came  with  it  a 
strengthening  of  some  of  the  finest  things  of  the  human  spirit 
and  doors  were  opened  to  visions  of  a world  to  be,  which  lifted 
us  up  to  the  ecstatic  heights  of  prophecy. 

Not  to  dwell  upon  other  hopes  turned  to  despair,  who  of  us 
did  not  see  as  an  aftermath  of  the  wai , the  dying  of  the  fires  of 
race  prejudice,  the  coming  of  a new  era  of  human  brotherhood? 
When  the  shot  was  fired  at  Sarajevo,  it  summoned  to  the  com- 
mon battlefield  almost  every  race  and  color — the  Englishman, 
the  Scotchman,  the  Irishman,  the  Welshman,  the  Canadian,  the 
Australian,  the  South  African,  the  Indiaman,  the  Slav,  the  Italian, 
the  Frenchman,  the  Montenegran,  the  Serbian,  the  Belgian. 
But  the  call  to  heroism  and  to  the  defence  of  human  liberty  was 
not  answered  alone  by  those  who  have  most  enjoyed  its  blessings 
and  who,  at  least  by  their  own  judgment  of  themselves,  belong 
to  the  cultured  and  civilized  races  of  the  earth,  but  there  stood 
by  their  side  the  little  yellow  man  from  Asia  with  the  same  courage 
and  intellect  that  once  bruised  the  paw  of  the  Great  Bear,  and  the 
Chinaman  was  there  with  pick  and  shovel  close  to  the  firing  line, 
and  the  Abyssinian  was  there  with  turban  and  flowing  robe  but 
with  a sword  unstained  by  cowardice,  and  the  Indian  was  there 
by  the  thousands  bringing  that  subtle  courage  and  sense  of  battle- 
field which  made  him  no  despised  foe  in  the  days  of  our  fathers, 
and  then  came  three  hundred  thousand  of  those  black  sons  of 
slavery  whose  color  has  become  lightened  by  the  steady  infusion 
of  three  hundred  years  of  the  blood  of  their  masters — these  all 
marched  in  the  common  ranks,  stood  in  the  common  trench,  were 
carried  back  to  a common  hospital  and  slept  at  last  in  a common 
grave. 


4 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


Did  history  ever  perpetrate  a bitterer  satire  than  to  summon 
those  to  fight  for  a democracy  which  had  ever  cast  them  outside 
of  its  privileges,  and  to  fight  for  a world  freedom  which  they  them- 
selves had  never  yet  tasted!  For  almost  three  hundred  years  we 
robbed  them  of  their  wages.  We  robbed  wives  of  their  husbands, 
husbands  of  their  wives,  mothers  of  their  children  and  children 
of  their  mothers.  We  robbed  women  of  the  right  to  choose  who 
should  be  the  fathers  of  their  children  and  children  of  the  right 
to  know  who  was  their  father  and  for  fifty  years  of  toilsome  yet 
victorious  climbing  out  of  slavery,  we  robbed  them  of  every  right 
for  which  our  Anglo-Saxon  forefathers  fought  from  before  the 
Magna  Charta  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  yet  these 
soldiers  of  color  fought  on  unfailingly  cheered  by  the  hope  that 
when  the  world  should  be  made  safe  for  Democracy,  that  Democ- 
racy should  be  made  safe  for  them,  that  when  the  rights  of  man, 
because  he  is  a man,  should  be  established  in  the  earth,  he  and 
his  suffering  race  should  not  be  forgotten. 

But  can  any  one  be  in  doubt  that  the  war  has  left  us  not  with 
a new  world  but  with  the  very  same  old  world  with  some  of  its 
worst  vices  alarmingly  intensified? 

Race  Prejudice  Revived 

It  is  surely  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  race  prejudice  is  at  its 
historical  worst  today.  Race  assertion  flaming  forth  in  brutal 
Japanized-Prussianism  in  Siberia  and  Korea,  the  dogs  of  race  war 
tugging  at  the  leash  in  China,  smoldering  under  the  surface  in 
India,  whetting  its  sword  on  a dozen  frontiers  in  the  Balkans, 
coming  to  its  own  in  Arabia  after  six  hundred  years  of  oppression, 
weltering  in  blocd  tn  Poland’s  century-soaked  field,  standing 
armed  to  the  teeth  cn  every  border  around  the  broken  empire  of 
Germany!  But  what  is  of  more  world  significance  and  to  us  of 
more  peril,  is  the  revival  of  race  distinctions  in  our  own  land  in 
most  un-Christian  forms. 

In  this  we  may  frankly  admit  that  we  Anglo-Saxons  are  well 
toward  the  forefront  of  offending — in  that  strutting,  swaggering 
and  Milgar  talk  al  out  this  being  a “white  man’s  world,”  “taking 
up  the  white  n an’s  1 urden” — the  1 urden  not  of  serving  but  of 
ruling,  and  squatting  upen  cveiy  choice  1 it  of  earth  and  crowding 
the  so-eallid  nations  of  lesser  breed  into  the  unlivable  remnants. 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


5 


Four  Books 

There  came  to  my  hands  this  summer  four  books*  which  were 
black  and  yellow  enough  to  have  blotted  out  the  sunshine  from 
any  other  atmosphere  than  the  rarified  air  and  beautiful  sunlight 
of  my  New  Hampshire  summer  ho  ne. 

One  is  not  able  to  ju  Ige  whether  “The  Rising  Tide  of  Color” 
by  Lathrop  Stoddard  is  the  product  of  a lone  brain  poisoned  by 
too  much  thinking,  or  whether  it  is  representative  of  a much 
larger  class — I fear  he  voices  the  sentiments  of  too  many  people 
of  our  race.  He  faces  us  with  the  fact  that  we  are  in  a world  of 
perhaps  1,700,000,000  people  of  whom  500,000,000  are  yellow, 

450.000. 000  are  brown,  and  150,000,000  are  black  and  550,000,000 
are  white — the  white  are  outnumbered  two  to  one.  He  tells  us 
that  the  white  race  tends  to  double  in  80  years,  the  yellow  a id 
browns  in  60  years  and  the  blacks  in  40  years — the  whites  are 
the  slowest  breeders  and  are  slowing  up  every  year.  He  tells 
us  also  that  of  the  53,000,000  square  miles  of  land  on  the  globe, 

47.000. 000  are  governed  by  this  white  race.  The  problem  which 
the  world  is  confronted  with  now  is,  how  long  will  two-thirds  of 
the  human  race  be  willing  to  allow  ten-elevenths  of  the  world’s 
surface  to  be  governed  by  the  other  one-third  of  the  world’s 
people?  And  this  with  some  of  the  nations  teeming  with  an 
overplus  population  and  crying  for  the  breast  of  mother  earth  and 
who  will  not  be  denied,  for  as  Stoddard  well  reminds  us  “there  is 
no  more  certain  breeder  of  strife  than  the  expansive  urge  of  a 
fast-breeding  people.” 

Race  Heredity 

The  menace  receives  added  emphasis  by  a broader  application 
of  the  laws  of  deterministic  heredity.  Twenty  years  ago  I filled 
a shelf  with  books  upon  the  rather  popular  study  of  the  laws  of 
heredity  as  applied  to  the  individual  especially  the  abnormal. 
McKim  in  his  “Heredity  and  Human  Progress”  thought  heredity 
so  inevitable  and  so  infallible  that  his  only  remedy  was  Carbonic 
Acid  Gas  for  the  undesirables  lest  they  breed  more  and  unchange- 
able undesirables.  Now  the  same  laws  are  brought  to  apply  to  a 

*“The  Rising  Tide  of  Color”  by  Lathrop  Stoddard. 

“Mankind”  by  Seth  K.  Humphrey. 

“Dark  Water”  by  W.  E.  B.  Du  Bois. 

“The  Negro  Faces  America”  by  Herbert  J.  Seligmann. 


6 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


race  and  Seth  K.  Humphrey  in  his  “Mankind”  has  taken  the 
experience  and  rules  of  breeding  on  the  stock  farm  and  laid  them 
down  upon  the  human  family  like  the  laws  of  the  Medes  and 
Persians  which  altereth  not  neither  can  be  changed.  He  says: 

“We  must  never  forget  that  since  history  began  there  has  been 
no  appreciable  change  in  inheritable  character  traits — only  in 
the  infinite  variety  of  their  combinations.  * * * It  is  a 

common  mistake  to  regard  non-Aryans  as  races  in  their  infancy, 
delayed  in  maturing,  and  destined  for  later  emergence.  There 
is  no  basis  for  the  belief  that  these  races  are  following  ages  behind, 
in  the  footsteps  of  the  Aryan  * * * The  search  for  racial 

ability  to  maintain  the  world’s  civilization  need  not  go  one  sten 
beyond  the  unmixed  White.” 

Of  course  this  is  joined  in  by  Stoddard  (“Rising  Tide  of  Color”) 
who  declares  with  a finality  that  Mrs.  Eddy  would  term  “appo- 
dictical” — 


“We  know  that  environment  and  education  can  develop  only 
what  heredity  brings.  We  know  that  the  acquirements  of  in- 
dividuals are  either  not  inherited  at  all  or  are  inherited  in  so 
slight  a degree  as  to  make  no  perceptible  difference  from  genera- 
tion to  generation.  In  other  words  we  now  know  that  heredity 
is  paramount  in  human  evolution,  all  other  things  being  secondary 
factors.” 

And  then  it  is  an  easy  kleap  to  this  conclusion  if  [we  follow 
closely  the  logic  of  Stoddard, — 

“Unless  every  lesson  of  History  is  to  be  disregarded,  we  must 
conclude  that  black  Africa  is  unable  to  stand  alone.  The 
black  man’s  numbers  may  increase  prodigiously  and  acquire 
alien  veneers,  but  the  black  man’s  nature  will  not  change.” 

All  of  which  has  a very  familiar  sound  to  anyone  who  has 
studied  the  history  of  the  races  and  their  relations  to  other  races. 
With  this  same  superiority  speaks  the  ancient  Hebrew  of  all  that 
vast  Gentile  world.  With  no  less  scorn  did  the  ancient  Assyrian 
look  upon  the  other  races  as  he  waded  knee  deep  in  their  blood. 
Thus  did  the  culture  of  the  city  of  Athens  view  all  barbarian 
hordes  and  thus  did  Rome  look  upon  all  the  peoples  of  her  vast 
empire.  Without  this  we  would  have  had  no  Prussianism  and 
the  Great  War  would  never  have  turned  earth  into  hell  for  four 
years.  “Any  group  which  desires  material  advantages  from 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


7 


the  exploitation  of  another  group  always  takes  pains  to  char- 
acterize its  victims  as  inferior.”* 

The  Program  of  the  Sword 

And  how  are  we  to  meet  this  Rising  Tide  of  Color — these  ex- 
cessive millions  and  millions  of  black,  yellow  and  red?  We  are 
not  left  in  doubt  at  all  by  these  writers  and  their  followers — it 
is  the  old  historic  method  which  has  filled  the  pages  of  history 
with  wars,  dug  the  trenches  for  the  dead  by  the  mile  and  mile, 
devasted  cities  and  decimated  populations  again  and  again — the 
program  of  force.  We  are  to  meet  this  menace  with  every  con- 
ceivable oppression,  build  our  walls  of  race  divisions  higher  and 
higher,  stand  upon  our  borders  guarding  them  against  these 
peoples  not  only  with  sword  and  cannon  but  with  insulting  as- 
sertions of  our  own  race  superiority  and  their  ignoble  inferiority 
and  if  that  does  not  suffice  we  shall  unsheathe  the  sword  and  fight 
for  white  civilization,  for  white  culture,  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  white  dominance  of  the  world.  And  this  in  books  issued  by 
Scribners  with  the  imprint  of  1920 — six  years  after  Prussia  took 
the  sword  to  establish  forever  the  permanency  of  the  superior 
Teutonic  Kultur  over  the  inferior  Latin  and  Anglo-Saxon  de- 
generates! It  may  be  that  the  underlying  and  unconscious  causes 
of  the  war  were  economic,  the  urge  of  a people  who  had  outgrown 
its  territory,  but  the  conscious  motive  was  the  assurance  that 
their  civilization  and  race  values  were  so  infinitely  superior  that 
all  the  rest  of  the  world  might  perish  better  than  that  their  own 
race  advancement  should  be  retarded.  This  poison  began  with 
Gobineau  who  wrote  a book  entitled  “An  Essay  on  the  Inequality 
of  Human  Races.”  If  you  will  read  his  work  you  will  find  that 
“The  Rising  Tide  of  Color”  is  but  Gobineau  revamped,  for  the 
scientific  assumptions  of  Gobineau  are  “first  that  races  are  un- 
equal by  decree  of  nature;  second  that  the  Aryan  is  the  only 
superior  race,  all  others  inferior;  third,  that  mixture  of  race  rapid- 
ly lowers  quality  and  is  the  source  of  decline.”  (Prof.  Jastrow 
in  The  Outlook.)  The  first  use  of  this  thesis  of  Gobineau  was  in 
the  defense  of  slavery.  And  then  later  it  was  taken  up  by  Niet- 
sche  and  made  the  Gospel  of  a nation.  The  many  arrogant  race 
assumptions  of  the  German  leaders  are  too  well  known  to  spend 


*Seligmann,  p.  30. 


8 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


time  upon  them  here  but  it  is  evident  that  a whole  race  had  be- 
come obsessed  with  the  sense  of  infinitely  superior  race  values  and 
Prof.  Jastrow  quotes  from  a letter  from  a Frankfort  school  girl 
to  a Swiss  girl  as  follows: 

“As  a matter  of  fact,  there  is  but  one  race  worthy  of  ruling  the 
world,  and  which  has  already  attained  the  highest  degree  of 
civilization.  The  race  is  ours,  the  Prussians;  for  though  we  Ger- 
mans in  general  are  the  lords  of  the  world,  the  Prussian  is  un- 
doubtedly the  lord  par  excellence  among  the  Germans.  Is  it 
not  shameful  that  other  nations,  who  have  no  right  to  existence 
on  the  earth,  wish  to  diminish  our  heritage!  We  are  the  divine 
fruits  and  the  others  are  only  weeds.  That  is  why  our  Emperor 
has  decided  to  put  an  end  to  all  these  injustices  and  to  extirpate 
the  weeds.” 

This  is  no  man  of  straw  which  we  are  called  upon  to  face  today. 
Those  who  really  believe  this  doctrine  as  applied  to  the  colored 
races  of  the  world  compared  with  the  white,  may  be  numbered 
by  the  thousands. 

The  Question 

How  long  will  the  one  billion  colored  peoples  consent  to  be 
exploited,  enslaved  personally  and  industrially,  flouted,  despised, 
shut  out  of  the  privileges  of  civilization  and  justice,  discriminated 
against  in  most  invidious  ways  by  a half  billion  of  whites?  How 
long  before  the  world  shall  tremble  with  their  revolt  as  they 
stand  on  their  hind  legs  with  faces  fronting  the  stars  in  the  light 
of  the  new  day,  none  able  to  deny  them  the  right  to  think? 

The  Answer 

The  answer  is  not  wanting  on  the  part  of  the  yellow  man. 
Over  yonder  two  mighty  races  are  awaking  and  as  they  stretch 
themselves  they  shake  the  world.  One  is  a race  not  yet  having 
found  itself,  with  teeming  millions,  endowed  with  the  finest 
brains  of  all  modern  races,  with  vast  undeveloped  resources  both 
of  manhood  and  material,  proud  of  their  past  glories  when  our 
fathers  were  barbarians — some  of  us  will  live  to  see  the  day  when 
China  will  demand  an  equal  chair  at  the  table  of  the  nations  and 
the  open  door  will  not  be  by  the  grace  of  the  white  man  but  open- 
ed and  defended  by  her  own  mighty  hand.  And  the  Japanese 
proud  of  her  past  with  the  mighty  deeds  of  her  Samurai,  with  her 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


9 


-civilization  which  looked  down  upon  the  modern  England  of 
Alfred  emerging  out  of  wild  and  untamed  tribes;  with  her  genius 
for  deeds,  with  racial  and  individual  ambitions  second  to  none, 
with  inventive  anti  imitative  genius  equal  to  her  industrial  tasks, 
with  armies  and  navies  which  have  and  may  again  clip  the  claws 
of  the  white  bear  of  the  north,  with  industry  which  does  not  limit 
the  product  at  one  end  and  limit  the  hours  at  the  other,  with  no 
anaemic  aristocracy  content  with  one  pampered  child  and 
six  poodle  dogs,  with  colleges  teeming  with  ambitious  youths 
pressing  hard  on  the  heels  of  the  white  man’s  child  for  every 
honor — the  day  for  despising  these  nations  with  any  prospect  of 
keeping  the  peace  of  the  world  is  passed.  It  is  either  brother- 
hood or  war — and  that  war  will  be  no  child’s  play.  Jeng’niz 
Khan  and  his  lieutenants  may  have  marched  through  central 
Asia  and  left  behind  18,500,000  slaughtered  human  beings  but 
in  such  a modern  conflict  we  may  as  well  resign  ourselves  to  the 
fact  that  the  battlefield  will  not  be  strewn  with  yellow  men  alone. 
We  who  have  made  the  Declaration  of  Independence  our  text 
book  ought  easily  to  understand  Count  Okuma  when  he  declares 
for  this  yellow  world,  “All  men  are  born  equal.  The  Asiatics 
have  the  same  claim  to  be  called  men  as  the  Europeans  them- 
selves. It  is  therefore  quite  unreasonable  that  the  latter  should 
have  any  right  to  predominate  over  the  former.” 

Nor  are  we  left  in  doubt  as  to  the  answer  being  now  given  by 
the  black  man.  After  more  than  two  centuries  of  close  contact 
with  the  highest  civilization  though  in  slavery,  and  after  a half 
century  of  the  slow  and  costly  infiltration  of  education  by  our 
mission  schools,  a considerable  minority  of  this  people  have 
emerged  as  leaders  and  thinkers  and  they  have  arrived  at  very 
articulate  race  consciousness  and  race  hopes.  But  along  with 
it  there  has  come  to  them  a clear  and  bitter  consciousness  of  their 
race  wrongs  at  the  hands  of  the  white  man  and  especially  at  the 
hands  of  the  Anglo-Saxon.  Every  thrust  upward,  every  new 
achievement  of  members  of  their  race,  every  slow,  painful  but 
sure  victory  in  the  industrial  and  economic  world,  every  year 
which  has  decreased  the  percentage  of  illiterates  and  added  to  the 
number  of  college  graduates,  has  brought  them  to  a horizon  from 
which  they  view  their  future  and  their  wrongs.  How  long  does 
this  white  man  expect  that  a race  which  can  start  out  of  slavery 
empty-handed,  without  a dollar,  without  any  education  and  in 


10 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


fifty  years  own  600,000  homes,  operate  980,000  farms,  conduct 
50,000  business  enterprises,  operate  100  insurance  companies, 
conduct  400  newspapers  and  periodicals  by  the  race  and  for  the 
race,  and  graduate  from  our  colleges  this  spring  540  of  their  own 
race — how  long  does  the  white  man  think  this  race  will  stand  hat 
in  hand  submitting  humbly  to  all  the  discriminations  which  are 
offered  his  people? 

The  Black  Man’s  Handicap 

With  the  heaviest  industrial  burdens  placed  upon  their  shoul- 
ders in  both  north  and  south,  they  find  that  equal  service  does 
not  demand  equal  pay  and  the  door  has  been  tightly  closed  to 
their  participation  in  the  Labor  Unions. 

They  face  a hostile  press,  in  fact  a press  which  seems  to  have 
ioined  in  a strong  conspiracy  to  fan  every  flame  of  race  prejudice, 
and  to  shift  to  the  black  man  every  outbreak  of  lust  or  crime. 
What  the  utterly  despicable  Hearst  papers  have  studiously 
attempted  by  lies,  by  trumped  up  charges,  by  every  known  appeal 
to  self  interest,  to  accomplish  against  the  yellow  man,  that  much 
of  the  press  of  America  seems  to  have  determined  to  do  for  the 
black.  Wherever  a riot  breaks  forth,  it  is  found  that  the  Press 
has  been  the  chief  incendiary.  General  Wood  remarks  after 
being  in  Omaha,  “One  of  the  first  steps  toward  preservation  of 
law  and  order  should  be  the  suppression  of  a rotten  press,  where 
there  is  one.”  It  was  so  in  Omaha,  in  Chicago,  in  Washington  as 
it  was  in  Atlanta.  The  Negro  knows  that  in  his  upward  hope  and 
aspiration,  he  starts  handicapped  by  a hostile  press  which  lies 
upon  every  breakfast  table  and  office  desk  in  America. 

He  turns  with  hope  to  that  last  bulwark  of  democratic  liberty, 
the  courts  of  justice  and  here  again  he  plays  against  loaded  dice 
for  he  knows  that  Anglo-Saxon  rules  of  procedure  are  reversed 
and  every  Negro  is  considered  guilty  until  he  is  proven  innocent. 
In  Arkansas  one  man  was  recently  sentenced  to  twenty-two  years 
in  prison  without  a single  witness  appearing  against  him  and  it 
took  a jury  seven  minutes  to  send  five  Negroes  to  the  electric 
chair.  And  we  do  not  need  to  ask  what  the  Negro  thinks  as  he 
sees  members  of  his  race  denied  even  an  approach  to  the  court 
but  executed  by  mobs  with  Anglo-Saxon  cruelty  unsurpassed 
by  the  most  lurid  stories  of  the  Hun  in  Belgium. 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


11 


Failing  in  all  of  these,  this  people  turn  their  desperate  eyes 
to  the  National  Capitol  where  once  sat  the  Great  Emancipator, 
that  greatest  Anglo-Saxon  of  whom  Horace  Greeley  once  said : 

“I  doubt  if  any  man,  woman  or  child,  white  or  black,  bond  or 
free,  ever  accosted  or  reached  out  a hand  to  Abraham  Lincoln, 
and  detected  in  his  countenance  or  manner  any  repugnance  or 
shrinking  from  the  proffered  contact,  any  assumption  of  supe- 
riority or  betrayal  of  disdain.” 

But  for  some  time  they  have  known  that  the  meanest  white  man 
is  more  welcome  in  our  Capitol  than  the  most  intellectual  and 
moral  black  man.  A Jim  Crow  car  may  be  irritating  but  a Jim 
Crow  democracy  is  intolerable. 

Dark  waters 

No  wonder  that  the  iron  has  entered  his  soul  and  that  he  is  in 
intellectual  and  moral  revolt.  Prof.  Du  Bois  in  his  “Darkwater” 
is  the  modern  Prometheus  chained  to  the  rock  with  the  vultures 
of  class  prejudice  gnawing  at  his  vitals,  struggling  and  straining 
to  bring  down  the  fire  of  God  to  his  people.  Whatever  one  may 
say  about  the  wisdom  of  his  utterances  in  this  heated  hour,  no 
one  can  deny,  that  we  have  given  him  full  justification  for  de- 
scribing his  lineage  as  “a  flood  of  Negro,  a strain  of  French,  a bit 
of  Dutch  but,  thank  God!  no  ‘Anglo-Saxon.’  ” P.  9. 

“What  then  is  this  dark  world  thinking?  It  is  thinking  that 
as  wild  and  awful  as  this  shameful  war  was,  it  is  nothing  to  com- 
pare with  that  fight  for  freedom  which  the  black  and  brown  and 
yellow  men  must  and  will  make  unless  their  oppression  and 
humiliation  and  insult  at  the  hands  of  the  White  World  cease. 
The  Dark  World  is  going  to  submit  to  its  present  treatment  just 
as  long  as  it  must  and  not  one  moment  longer.”  P.  49. 

Is  it  not  significant  that  Prof.  Du  Bois  representing  the  black 
race  and  Lothrop  Stoddard  representing  the  white  race  should 
emerge  from  the  study  of  this  problem  both  with  a sword  in  hand? 

Will  the  White  Race  Survive? 

Is  this  the  only  alternative?  Let  us  accept  Stoddard’s  dark 
view  at  its  worst.  The  white  race  is  dying  compared  with  the 
dark  races.  The  white  race  is  no  longer  able  to  maintain  its 
place  in  the  lead  of  the  procession  because  of  a decreasing  birth 
rate.  The  far  flung  battle  line  or  frontiers  of  the  white  man  are 


12 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


now  being  bitterly  challenged  by  the  dispossessed  colored  races, 
by  the  Red  in  South  America,  the  Brown  in  India,  the  Yellow  in 
Asia  and  the  Black  in  Africa  and  America.  The  “outer”  and 
“inner  dykes”  are  breaking  down  and  a slow  infusion  of  colored 
blood  is  taking  place  into  the  whites  and  the  blacks  are  slowly 
bleaching  out.  Ten  million  white  soldiers  with  a rich  inheritance 
lie  in  The  Great  War’s  grave  whereon  the  white  race  committed 
suicide — and  perhaps  twenty  million  other  whites  died  by  disease, 
starvation  and  deprivation.  One  more  war  like  the  last  and  the 
white  race  will  be  ordered  to  the  rear.  No  artificial  means,  no 
laws,  no  sword  ever  bolstered  up  a race  which  turned  its  back  on 
duty  and  resolutely  turned  its  r ace  toward  dilletanteism,  pleasure 
and  ease.  No  law  has  ever  yet  been  discovered  which  can 
prevent  the  races  who  are  willing  to  work,  and  willing  to  breed 
their  kind  from  dispossessing  the  races  decimated  by  sloth,  pleas- 
ure and  race  suicide.  Suppose  the  white  race  as  now  constituted 
is  to  be  “one  with  Ninevah  and  Tyre”?  Supposing  with  all  our 
culture  we  are  to  give  place  as  did  those  who  wrote  the  libraries 
of  Alexandria,  or  filled  the  archives  of  Nippur  with  ten  thousand 
volumes,  or  the  Greeks  who  have  put  all  intellectual  ages  in  debt 
or  the  Roman  with  his  power  for  justice,  laws  and  civilization? 
Such  a day  of  judgment  was  never  postponed  in  history  by  shrug- 
ging the  shoulders,  by  oppression,  by  race  prejudice  and  race 
pride  or  by  the  unsheathed  sword.  History  has  but  one  verdict 
on  such  a program — “They  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish  by 
the  sword.”  Every  drop  of  blood  shed  by  the  sword — the  sword 
of  steel  or  the  sword  of  oppressive  laws — hastens  the  day  of 
destruction  of  its  wielder.  May  be  the  white  man  is  to  be  slowly 
snuffed  out  between  the  thumb  and  forefinger  of  color — there  is  a 
strange  law  of  evolution  which  warns  us  that  the  “best”  are  not 
always  the  “fittest  to  survive.”  Races  have  been  strong  and 
great,  have  builded  and  written,  invented  and  created  and  have 
passed  on  while  races  then  forgotten  and  despised  came  into  the 
inheritance  of  their  race  values.  One  can  almost  see  the  sneer 
on  the  face  of  Caesar  and  his  legions  had  they  been  told  that  those 
barbarous,  gluttonous,  blood-drinking  peoples,  whom  they  found 
in  Britain’s  Island,  should  some  day  establish  laws  for  a vaster 
realm  than  Rome  and  possess  a culture  finer  and  more  humanita- 
rian. And  it  could  not  have  been  if  Rome  had  continued  to  de- 
spise and  oppress  and  shut  them  out  from  participation  in  their 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


13 


finer  life.  But  out  from  Rome  went  those  men  of  truer  vision 
who  transferred  to  Britain  the  best  Of  Rome’s  inheritance.  To 
transfer  to  the  barbarians  of  northern  Europe  the  cream  of 
Rome’s  culture  and  faith,  was  a vastly  greater  thing  for  the  un- 
born generations  than  standing  with  dripping  sword  to  turn 
back  the  swelling  tides  of  Teutonic  tribes.  In  the  evolutionary 
process  the  disappearance  of  a race  seems  to  be  of  little  moment. 

“The  Moving  Finger  writes,  and  having  writ  moves  on”  but 
the  losing  of  the  finer  values  and  achievements  of  that  race,  the 
neglect  of  that  race  to  transfer  those  values  to  those  who  shall 
come  on,  this  is  the  only  defeat  which  the  evolutionary  process 
knows.  In  spite  of  our  pride  and  conceit,  it  may  be  barely  possi- 
ble that  the  survival  of  the  white  race  is  not  a sine  qua  non  for 
future  progress.  It  may  be  that  the  darker  races  are  now  on  the 
threshold  with  their  hand  on  the  latch  string  to  enter. 

The  Better  Way  Out 

No  race  lives  its  truest  life  in  living  for  its  racial  today,  but 
which  lives  a projected  life  for  tomorrow.  The  white  will  serve  the 
unborn  most  truly  if  we  shall  unstintedly  and  ungrudgingly  pass 
on  to  these  darker  races  the  finest  achievements  of  our  culture  and 
faith.  This  at  least  is  the  only  program  for  a Christian,  for  of  races 
it  may  be  said  as  it  was  said  of  the  individual,  “He  that  saveth  his 
life  shall  lose  it  but  he  that  loset’n  his  life  for  my  sake  and  the 
Gospel’s  shall  save  it.”  The  American  Board  with  its  missions 
and  its  Doshisha  colleges  has  done  more  to  insure  the  world 
against  the  ravages  of  the  Yellow  Peril  and  of  Japanese  Prussian 
Militarism  than  the  broken  swords  of  Russia  and  Germany. 
The  American  Missionary  Association  with  fifty  years  of  service 
among  the  Orientals  in  California,  transforming  and  equipping 
hundreds  of  Oriental  youths  with  Christian  Democracy  and  faith, 
has  done  more  to  insure  the  peace  of  tomorrow,  to  keep  the  world 
fit  for  the  unborn  than  all  the  swords  brandished  by  a Hearst  or  a 
legislature.  Whether  the  yellow  man  is  to  dominate  America  or 
not  is  very  doubtful  but  that  he  is  to  dominate  Asia  is  certain  and 
the  attitude  of  America  toward  the  yellow  man  for  the  next 
twenty-five  years  will  determine  whether  Asia  is  to  be  Pagan  or 
Christian.  The  giving  to  the  yellow  man  Christian  faith  and 
Christian  education  and  thus  fit  him  to  make  Asia  a decent  place 


14 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


for  the  children  of  tomorrow  may  mesh  into  the  scheme  of  divine 
Providence  more  closely  than  the  maintenance  of  the  white  man’s 
superiority. 

The  Human  Right  to  a Future 

And  so  with  our  still  darker  brother,  the  Negro.  That  the 
Negro  will  ever  displace  the  white  man  in  America  is  exceedingly 
doubtful,  but  that  he  will  remain  here,  will  have  a part  in  the 
making  or  unmaking  of  our  civilization,  and  that  that  will  be  an 
increasingly  large  part,  there  can  be  no  possible  doubt.  To  stand 
with  sword  in  hand  to  defend  the  white  man’s  domains  or  rights, 
to  bar  every  approach  to  the  best  and  all  the  best  things  which 
the  white  man  has  achieved,  to  deny  him  the  commonest  rights 
vouchsafed  by  the  Magna  Charta  and  the  Constitution  has  not 
availed  us  anything  but  only  to  exaggerate  the  problem,  and 
bring  strife,  hatred  and  bloodshed  and  prevent  him  from  living 
a one  hundred  percent  man  among  his  own  race.  The  historic 
soul  of  the  American  Missionary  Association  has  been — (a  soul 
which  we  have  maintained  against  all  comers,  in  the  face  of 
hatreds  and  misunderstandings,  in  spite  of  calumnies  and  perse- 
cutions)— is  that  a superior  race  vindicates  its  faith  in  its  supe- 
riority not  by  fearing  another  race,  or  by  keeping  that  race  sub- 
merged and  “in  its  place”  but  by  opening  to  that  race  the  door 
to  every  human  right  and  every  privilege  which  will  enable  that 
race  to  live  its  own  life  in  the  completest  way.  For  that  reason 
we  have  not  planned  for  him  an  education  which  would  keep  him 
inferior  or  which  would  enable  him  to  keep  on  serving  a superior 
race.  We  believe  in  the  Hampton  Idea  and  the  Tuskegee  Idea 
with  all  our  hearts  but  we  believe  also  in  the  Fisk  Idea,  the 
Howard  Idea,  the  Talladega  Idea,  the  Straight  Idea — in  other 
words  we  believe  in  the  education  of  the  hand,  the  heart,  the 
head.  We  believe  that  if  a liberal  education  is  needed  for  our 
boys  to  enable  them  to  live  a whole  life,  it  is  no  less  needed  for 
the  darker  boy  and  girl  that  they  may  occupy  the  whole  human 
house,  hang  upon  its  walls  finer  and  purer  pictures,  fit  every 
room  with  better  and  more  pleasureable  furnishings,  and  that  he 
may  go  from  the  cellar  of  service  to  the  upper  chambers  of  in- 
tellectual life  and  open  the  windows  to  a broader  and  fairer 
horizon.  This  we  covet  for  our  own  and  this  we  equally  covet 
for  him  and  his.  And  this  he  will  have. 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


15 


A Race  in  Revolt 

He  is  now  in  open  revolt  against  the  industrial  theory  that  shuts 
him  out  from  Labor  Unions  and  from  labor  of  technical  skill ; he  is 
in  open  revolt  against  an  education  which  purposes  to  keep  the 
Negro  in  his  place — that  of  hewers  of  wood  and  carriers  of  water, 
of  washer-women  and  servants,  of  the  white  coat  and  Pullman  cap 
and  he  will  soon  no  longer  hear  the  beckoning  whistle  of  the  white 
man  or  his  call  of  “here  boy”  or  ‘‘here  George”;  and  now  he  is  in 
open  revolt  against  that  theory  of  democracy  which  opens  the 
ballot  booth  wide  to  harlots  and  procureurs,  to  thieves  and  thugs, 
to  the  white  man  who  can  make  only  his  mark  and  shuts  it  in  the 
face  of  the  most  cultured  and  moral  whose  face  is  black;  and  he 
is  in  open  revolt  against  that  conception  or  interpretation  of  our 
Constitution  which  with  hat  in  hand  throws  the  door  of  full 
American  citizenship  wide  open  to  the  Reds  of  Russia,  to  the 
Mafias  of  Italy,  to  the  Incendiaries  of  Ireland,  to  the  illiterates 
-of  the  Balkans  and  declares  his  own  college  graduates  as  unfit  and 
dangerous  for  citizenship,  but  the  rights  of  citizenship  with  the 
full  and  free  exercise  of  the  ballot  and  equal  rights  in  the  public 
schools,  this  man  will  have  if  he  has  to  strip  the  cotton  fields  of 
the  south  of  their  workers,  the  homes  of  their  servants  and  move 
north  by  the  hundreds  of  thousands  and  he  will  face  the  northern 
mob  with  citizenship  rather  than  face  the  southern  mob  without 
citizenship  for  to  him  as  to  us  Liberty  is  more  precious  than  life. 

The  Challenge  of  Ignorance 

And  if  we  divested  ourselves  of  every  bit  of  Christian  philan- 
thropy, we  should  still  go  on  and  we  should  call  upon  every  Amer- 
ican to  come  with  us  to  save  this  colored  race  to  save  ourselves. 
America  is  not  safe  when  of  a race  now  numbering  nearly  twelve 
million,  forty  percent  of  the  children  between  the  ages  of  six  and 
fourteen  were  not  in  school  a single  day  for  the  last  year  prior 
to  our  last  census.  America  is  not  safe  when  in  the  regions  where 
most  of  them  live,  few  schools  beyond  the  ninth  grade  are  provided 
for  them.  When  this  race  holds  the  balance  of  political  power  in 
the  great  city  of  Chicago,  it  is  of  supreme  moment  to  us  that  in  the 
15  States  from  which  these  Negroes  are  mostly  recruited,  the 
salaries  paid  for  teachers  show  $10.32  paid  per  white  pupil  and 
$2.85  paid  per  colored  pupil.  America  is  not  safe  when  in  Mont- 


16 


RACE  VALUES  AND  RACE  DESTINIES 


gomery,  Alabama,  the  teacher’s  salaries  for  the  white  pupil  aver- 
age $20.94  and  for  the  colored  pupil  $3.67,  and  yet  the  illiteracy 
among  the  white  was  1.1  percent  and  among  the  colored  was 
25.1  per  ceet.  Georgia  spent  last  year  or  the  year  before  S772,943 
for  the  higher  education  of  the  whites  and  $10,000  for  the  higher 
education  of  the  colored — the  colored  forming  close  to  one-half 
the  population.  These  men  either  North  or  South  will  have  the 
ballot— Democracy  dies  in  the  hands  of  the  ignorant  voter. 

The  Diviner  Harmony 

And  if  we  are  wise  we  will  do  this  not  because  the  colored  man 
needs  us  but  because  we  need  him.  No  race  is  complete  in  itself, 
no  race  liveth  unto  itself.  Each  plays  its  part  in  the  great  orchestra 
of  the  world.  The  violinist  may  believe  that  he  alone  is  needed  to 
make  complete  harmony,  but  the  great  conductor  listens  not 
alone  for  his  fine  stringed  note,  but  for  the  cornet,  the  flute,  the 
base  viol,  the  drum  and  the  cymbals.  And  He  who  shapes  that 
“far  off  divine  event  toward  which  the  whole  creation  moves,” 
out  of  all  this  discord  and  jangling  will  perfect  his  own  praise  and 
He  who  shapes  the  eternal  harmonies  knows  that  for  the  perfect 
whole  each  race  is  essential. 


